School’s Success Story Gives Way to Doubt

Friday

Oct 31, 2008 at 5:12 AM

After years of skyrocketing test scores, a school in Charleston, S.C., is the subject of an investigation on whether erasure marks on tests indicate fraud.

ADAM NOSSITER

CHARLESTON, S.C. — MiShawna Moore has been a hero in the worn neighborhoods behind this city’s venerable mansions, a school principal who fed her underprivileged students, clothed them, found presents for them at Christmas and sometimes roused neglectful parents out of bed in the nearby housing projects.

As test scores rocketed at her school, Sanders-Clyde Elementary, the city held her up as a model. The United Way and the Rotary Club honored her, The Charleston Post and Courier called her a “miracle worker,” and the state singled out her school to compete for a national award. In Washington, the Department of Education gave the school $25,000 for its achievements.

Somehow, Ms. Moore had transformed one of Charleston’s worst schools into one of its best, a rare breakthrough in a city where the state has deemed more than half the schools unsatisfactory. It seemed almost too good to be true.

It may have been. The state has recently started a criminal investigation into test scores at Ms. Moore’s school, seeking to determine whether a high number of erasure marks on the tests indicates fraud.

Ms. Moore, who has denied any wrongdoing, has taken a job out of state, leaving behind hurt feelings and wounded pride in a city of race and class divisions as old as the time-mellowed neighborhoods in this Old South shrine. The public schools here are 98 percent African-American, and nearly 20 percent of the city’s population was below the poverty level in the 2000 census.

“They say we cheated — that’s kind of disrespecting us,” said Syllia Davis, 16, who was one of Ms. Moore’s students.

“The kind of community we live in, they just don’t believe we could be that smart,” said Ms. Davis, now a student at the public Garrett Academy of Technology, peering from a doorway in the old low-rise housing project behind the school. Down the street, police officers were stopping drivers for what they said were routine license checks.

“She’d do anything for us,” Ms. Davis continued. “She’d buy clothing, food baskets. I wish she’d come back. She worked hard for us. For us to see her on the news and get antagonized like that, it’s not nice.”

The message was the same from the cooks, maintenance workers and nurses dropping off their children on a recent chilly morning. “It was like this was her family,” said Sonya Jenkins, a former nursing attendant. “She had great love for these kids.”

Even as parents, students and some teachers rally around her, the school district that once championed Ms. Moore says it is waiting on the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Sanders-Clyde Elementary under Ms. Moore “became a symbol of what can be achieved with the proper attention,” said the schools superintendent, Nancy J. McGinley. “That’s why this situation is so distressing. It really, I think, has been hurtful to the entire community.”

Did something happen to the test booklets once the students had gone home for the day? A sharp drop in scores when the tests were closely monitored this past spring by the school district only heightened suspicions.

Ms. Moore, who worked into the night and on weekends for her students, is now the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for schools in Halifax County, N.C. She denied any wrongdoing in a recent interview on local television and said the affair was a “nightmare” for her. Through her lawyer here, she declined to comment.

The school, a two-story brick building framed by palmetto trees, has 326 students in a fraying district worlds away from tourist Charleston’s 18th-century brick-and-stucco splendor. Unassuming in appearance, it “was one of the jewels in our crown,” Dr. McGinley said.

Ms. Moore’s students, nearly all black, seemed to be breaking away from the well-worn path of low achievement leading to low skills and low pay in the Charleston tourism industry. The principal’s renown was such that she had been given control of yet another struggling downtown Charleston school, in hopes that she could also turn it around.

But then she left town after the closely supervised tests were given in May, later expressing unhappiness with the change in testing policy. The school district said her resignation was unexpected, and Dr. McGinley said at the time that she had encouraged Ms. Moore to stay.

“We were really hoping Sanders-Clyde was going to be our proof that we can educate any child, no matter where they came from,” said Pamela Kusmider, the departing board chairwoman for downtown schools. “When I saw what she was doing, I was like, yeah, she was proving that these kids really can succeed.”

The school’s turnaround after Ms. Moore took over in 2003 seemed miraculous. Under South Carolina guidelines, most of the students that year were not ready for the next grade; the state deemed the school’s progress unsatisfactory. Then things started to change. Many students made spectacular gains — leaps that in retrospect seem unlikely.

“You don’t go from nonreader to proficient reader over the course of a year,” said Janet Rose, a Charleston school official.

By 2007, 96 percent of third graders taking a South Carolina test at Sanders-Clyde met the state standard in English, compared with an average of 78.3 percent at other city schools.

Meanwhile, Ms. Moore was building a reputation as a kind of Mother Teresa of poor Charleston. She did laundry for the children. She found money to pay families’ electric bills and helped them balance their checkbooks. At Thanksgiving she was at the supermarket buying turkeys. She maintained food and clothes closets at the school, which became a kind of community center, drawing in well-wishing business partners across the city.

“When families ran out of food stamps, they knew they could go up there,” Dr. McGinley said. “She understood the connection: we can’t get to the academics until we get to the environment.”

Michael Ethridge, a Charleston lawyer who did volunteer work for the school, said: “It was amazing to see. She’s just something of a force of nature.” Mr. Ethridge added, “You had the sense the kids were cared for.”

But whispers began when the test scores rose, and some wondered if the success was really possible. Sanders-Clyde students struggled when they went to other schools. Ms. Kusmider was dumbfounded to find her son’s friend, a student at the school, having great difficulty reading. “I said, ‘What’s going on? You’re under MiShawna Moore,’ ” she said. “I was very angry.”

Another parent, Tanika Bausley, recalled, “It was hard for me to believe the scores that my daughter had, knowing the struggles she was having,” adding that her child had a “borderline learning disability.”

After testing in 2007, the state noticed an unusually high number of erasure marks — as many as seven per child — with the erasures becoming correct answers. “That became a concern, because the likelihood of that happening is very small,” said Ms. Rose, the district official, noting that the average was around one such mark.

This year, after the tests were closely monitored, the scores plummeted. Suddenly, 44.4 percent of third graders taking the state science test met the state standard, compared with 84.6 percent in 2007. Many teachers said afterward that the presence of the auditors themselves — “cold and very distant,” as one put it — negatively influenced the scores.

The school district is not so sure.

“All the evidence is pointing in the direction of something happening,” Ms. Rose said. “The fact that she left doesn’t make it look any better. People sort of fill in the blanks.”

Ms. Moore, speaking to the television interviewer, said, “I had nothing to do with the allegations that are being made in the newspaper against me and Sanders-Clyde.”

Still, the hurt lingers.

“It’s just disappointing that so much is in question,” said Melvin Middleton, who took over as principal after Ms. Moore left. “It’s the whole idea that the children in this area, it wasn’t possible for them to achieve as previously identified.

“Kids read that. Kids are hearing things.”

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